Visionary Fiction and Posthumous Narration: Similarities and Differences

The article considers the problem of genesis and evolution of the modern posthumous narration, i.e. the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the inner world of the work, is represented as a dead person. The question is raised about how the genre of vision, which is close to the narrative from beyond the grave in a number of respects, relates to it. Structural similarities and differences between vision and posthumous narrative are revealed. It is established that three fundamental characteristics of the posthumous narrative are only partially inherent to visions: in this genre there is also a description of the “other” world, albeit fragmented, but the subject of vision goes there without dying or while being in an uncertain position between life and death, and most importantly, the narration is not transmitted to this person in its totality (and if in the rarest cases it is transmitted, then the subject of vision is not dead, but alive). The extreme cases of the convergence of vision with posthumous narrative as such are noted when the narration in the vision is characterized by rudiments of the syncretism of the subject and fragments of the story are told by the visionary himself, who at that moment has not yet been resurrected. The limit to such a convergence is set by the fact that, according to the laws of the genre, the visionary is ultimately resurrected, which does not happen in posthumous narrative, and the “transfer” of the narrative to a dead person is not an artistically conscious device, but an extremely “tenacious” rudiment of the syncretic stage of the evolution of poetics.